Social Media & Law Enforcement

When you post to social media you expect it to be seen, but are the police included in your audience?
Back in the early days of social media, networks like Facebook and Instagram used to be a where young people felt their posts were intended for a very specific audience. Parents, teachers, employers or other superiors didn’t tend to go on social media because it was designed for a younger demographic. Posting un-self consciously—whether it was parties, weekend shenanigans or other bad behaviors—was the norm and actively encouraged.
These days, things have markedly changed. With older age group participation growing fast on social media, expecting your parent or relative to see your posts is now commonplace. What’s less known, however, is another unintended audience member that might be looking: law enforcement.
Law enforcement has become increasingly social media savvy over the past half decade, mainly because social media serves as a potential treasure trove of information and evidence for various wrong-doings. And because users generally don’t expect that law enforcement will be trawling the web to find posts that might be useful to their purposes, it’s not uncommon that criminals or those bending the law will use social media in a way that unknowingly helps law enforcement build a case against them.
So just how commonplace is the use of social media by law enforcement? In a survey conducted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, 95.9 % of agencies surveyed use social media in some capacity, with the most common use of social media being for criminal investigations. It also reported that the most frequently used social media platforms are Facebook (92.1%), Twitter (64.8%), and YouTube (42.9%).
If this usage is so prevalent, it’s worth asking just what it’s being used for. Various law enforcement agencies report that tipsters are often more willing to come forward with information on social media than they are on the phone or in person. In addition, using geo-location tools to search through posts in a given area can help uncover evidence, locate potential witnesses to a crime and determine the exact whereabouts of a suspect before, during and after a crime took place. Lastly, using social media can help local law enforcement departments build goodwill in the neighbourhoods they serve by carrying out an ongoing and civil conversation with their constituencies.  
Police aren’t the only ones snooping on social media for clues, though. Litigators and cyber security firms who are tasked with digging into an individual’s assets or holdings are using it as well. The Guardian recently reported that “leading cybersecurity firms said they were using evidence from social media in up to 75% of their litigation cases, ranging from billionaire divorces to asset disputes between oligarchs.”
What’s interesting in this case is that they aren’t necessarily looking at the feeds of oil barons and finance magnates, but rather, their children. Posting an Instagram from dad’s yacht or country manor looks a little suspicious if dad is claiming he has no assets to spare. Sometimes, the social media investigations can be more complex too. By surveilling someone on social media over a long period of time, law enforcement can deduce a significant amount of information about where that individual spends their time and who they speak to and mix with. The irony, of course, is that the target of these investigations usually have no idea that they are helping law enforcement with every post, location tag, and hashtag.
The effectiveness with which law enforcement can use social media is a reflection of our relationship to it. Though it’s incredibly public, we imagine our posts and accounts as being quite intimate, and only intended for our friends, family, and followers. Though it can feel like an intrusion when someone uses our posts against us, legally that is the system we opt into.

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